Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville - Jeff Dayton:The man who led Glen Campbell's band shares his remarkable career path.

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Jeff Dayton shares his journey from early musical beginnings to becoming Glen Campbell's band leader for 15 years and his current projects honoring Campbell's legacy. His remarkable career trajectory includes opening for major acts across the country, traveling internationally, and developing a deep connection with the Campbell family. • Discovered his love for guitar at age 10 after finding his father's instrument in a closet • Balanced formal music education with performing in bands on weekends • Won the Wrangler Country Showdown which brought him to Nashville • Glen Campbell personally selected him as band leader after seeing him perform • Toured with Campbell for 15 years across all 50 states and internationally • Currently performs tribute shows to Glen Campbell with blessing from Campbell's family • Created "Making Music Nashville Style" program working with children including those with special needs • Launching a new podcast called "Count it Off" featuring music industry guests • Formed GMC group honoring Garfunkel, Manilow and Campbell with other musicians • Values Nashville's musical community and the opportunity to work with industry greats Find Jeff at JeffDaytonMusic.com and on social media platforms to stay updated on his upcoming projects and performances.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars, or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information. on how they evolved into their chosen career.

We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Joining us today is Jeff Dayton.

After 15 years as band leader with Hall of Fame legend Glenn Campbell and touring with country icons like Lee Greenwood and Kenny Chesney, Jeff has now launched an intimate show saluting Glenn Campbell. The performances features Campbell's timeless hits woven with personal stories from their years together.

With a wealth of unforgettable moments from his time here in Nashville, Jeff is here to share some of those cherished memories with us. It's a true pleasure to have him here. Thanks for coming on. Man, what a great opportunity to be on, and thank you for inviting me to do this. Oh, it's my pleasure.

So you started out in music. Did you always know that music was going to be your career? I mean, it was your passion, or did it just kind of fall in place for you? Well, it seems like it has. I was five years old, and I wrote a book about going to the moon, and I really wanted to be an astronaut.

Then I wanted to be a pro baseball player, first baseman. That was my spot. But music was inspired by my dad, George Dayton, and he had a guitar in the closet, and when I opened up their closet one time, and went, whoa, that's a guitar. He was a weekend warrior in Dixieland groups playing rhythm guitar,

and his man was Freddie Green from Count Basie. And we talked about that for years afterwards, but it got me into the guitar, wanting a guitar, and he was gone by the time. My mom bought me my first guitar just on the cusp of being 10 years old, and it's been off to the races ever since. I've had a couple of what we call straight jobs in the business, you know? Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Now, once you got your guitar, did you have lessons, or did you just start picking it up by ear and move forward that way? I got that guitar in fourth grade in the spring of fourth grade, and first thing I did was take it to school to perform on it. But if you're listening closely, you recognize that I don't still know how to play guitar. And I brought it to school and started trying to play it, and my teacher said, Jeff, that's really nice. Why don't you take that home and work on it for a while and then bring it back for us? Because I didn't realize until that point that I didn't know how to play, but in my heart, in my being, I was a guitar player.

I could, this was going to be easy. So I signed up for lessons at the music store, and it was some old guy who taught me out of some decrepit old dusty book. Nothing against him personally, but it wasn't for me. I wanted, you know, popular music. And these were songs like buzzing on the B-string, you know, they couldn't make it more boring. And so that's what I did.

And I got, I ran into friends who had big sisters that played guitar, and they showed me chords to give me my boots and saddle, learned my first A chord from her. And that was it. I mean, then it was in school. I was a drummer in the school band in fifth grade. Drums and guitar. I always, and I asked him, can't you just write charts for the guitar?

And he said, no, we don't have a guitar. Well, I said, well, can't you just put them in there? He goes, no, pick something else. So I said, okay, drums. This story sounds so familiar. I was a piano player, and they didn't have piano in concert band. Yeah, yeah. So we made a deal.

They created a stage band for me to play piano in, but meanwhile, I had to play drums, percussion, timpony, whatever. Yeah. In retrospect, it was actually pretty good. Every piece of music you get to learn gives you a perspective and helps you move forward. You remember your rudiments book from Haskell W.R? Oh, yeah, yeah.

I wish I still had it. That was where I practiced. The very first music book that I learned piano from was big note for piano for the beginners. Oh, man. The cool story about that book, when I went to Berkeley College of Music, I sat down with my improv professor.

He says, play me your best song. I sat down and played him a Beethoven. He said, good. Then he put a book. He says, this is what we're going to learn from. And it was the big note for beginners. And I looked at him, I said, that's what I learned from.

Yeah. His response, well, then, you should know it. And then he went on to show me different things and improv from that book that I never thought was possible. That's great. That is truly great. My sister had a book called How to Play Piano Despite Years of Lessons. I love that. Yeah, and I remember I was in my first college band at Southwest Minnesota State College. The sax player, Chris Nolte, who I'm still dear friends with, took a solo on a song and the band director criticized him for not playing what was on the page. Now, where was all this happening? Where was your school?

I was in Minnesota, fifth grade band, and then the high school band started in the seventh grade, because we were such a small town that we had, our drum section was five people. Yeah, my town was very small, we had a small band, and the memories that it gives is still lingers today, so it really helped my music and wanting to do music moving forward. Oh, sure. And when I wasn't playing in the school band, I was sitting with my first music, trying to learn how to play the Hoos record I can see for miles.

Yeah, I had a small little four-piece band other than the school myself. Real fun, great memories. So after school, did you make the big move or where did you go from there? No, I actually went right from high school to college down in Marshall, Minnesota, at Southwest, and I was there for three years. And I was telling myself I was going to major in theater, and the only reason being that I loved the stage and the lights, again, just drawn towards it. After a couple of quarters, it was a three quarter a year program.

I asked the music department if I could go over there, and my teacher, True Sacrason, was a great cellist at the Curtis with Leonard Rose. And she looked at my aunt, she said, can you play the guitar? I said, yes. And then she said, well, okay, then you can play the cello. So for the next two years, I was two and a half years, I was a cellist in the orchestra as well. And that was still formal training, but it was also weekends with bands playing around the rural area,

playing the ballrooms where the band would come in and play country music, and then the last hour we played 50s for the really wild crowd. Beer and setups, and they'd be dancing. A big gig was 25 bucks, the regular gigs were 25. So we were mowing the money down. That's a great story. I'm sure it brings back fond memories to you. And the cello is such a great instrument.

Well, it got me some work, and I ended up doing some things on the cello for other people, including David Sandler, who was one of Brian Wilson's protégés from the Beach Boys, and he hired me for some work on it. But the funny thing was that my opinion of the cello and the University of Minnesota's opinion of me on the cello were quite different. And when I had transferred to go to the U, they basically shamed me out of the audition with a very snobby kind of thing.

And so I had the bands anyway. I was playing in the bands full time and going to school part-time. And all through the Minneapolis days, I mean, I was doing better away from school, but I was always taking my courses because I knew I wanted to graduate. So school ended for me in 1985 when I graduated from Arizona State with a cum laude degree in music. So that's great. You've made it through college, got your degree in music. The next question, what was next? Well, there were things already happening.

School was there to get school done. But in 84, I was in Phoenix by then. We'd, for five years had been riding high on the wave of urban cowboy playing clubs. And in Minneapolis, same thing. playing with, one guy had just finished playing with Bob Dylan on blood on the tracks, and then our drummer became the guy that joined Prince for the Revolution, and he was Bobby Zee. But in Arizona, in 84, well, 83, our band High Noon won the Wrangler Country Showdown, which is today called the Colgate, if it still exists, to Nashville, and I was all,

I just, I felt the energy here, I just felt the electricity. I was loving in Phoenix. And in 84, I got a cut with George Strait on his Fort Worth album, and it got me the golden platinum, you see, behind me. the band was doing really well and playing clubs, and I had graduated college, and pretty soon Glenn Campbell came along in 1987 and saw us opening a huge concert at the Coliseum with Merle Haggard and the Judd's in Alabama,

and came backstage, and the next night, there he was again, and he sat in with the band at a private event, and about two days later, it called me and said, guess what, you're my new band leader. That's definitely a great story. So now Glenn was making his mark about that time, So what did it feel like when you went from what you was doing and now you're a band leader for Glenn Campbell?

It blew my mind. Especially my mother-in-law at the time. She about dropped on the floor. It's Glenn Campbell. She couldn't believe it. Country lady from Virginia. The band picked up a ton of additional credibility, and we were already opening concerts, as I mentioned,

but we got a ton of stuff. I mean, I opened for 2025 different acts in Phoenix at every major stage in town. Then we went on the road with Glenn, and so the press started writing about us, and there we were out there doing tours to England and Australia and New Zealand and playing all 50 states and having a monstrously good time with one of the greats of the Hall of Fame. I mean, he's the Hall of Fame or in the Hall of Fame, I think. Yeah, there's no denying Glenn Campbell is one of the all-time greats.

There will never be another one like him. Ever. Totally, Tony. Hey, Tony, the people listening can't see behind you, but is that Reba holding a trophy over there? there that I see? Yeah, that's a picture that she gave me that she signed. Oh, okay. She just signed it, or did you write one of her hits? No, I wish. We've just known each other for years. Okay.

The one next to it is a personally signed Elvis photo. Oh. Then, of course, Cher. And beside that is, of course, Debbie Campbell, I produce her, and that's the book she wrote about her life with Glenn. Oh, right. Yeah, that's right. We have that connection, don't we? Yeah, we do. In 87, when Glenn came to see me, his daughter Debbie was with me. Nice.

Then, right after that, she started not right away, but eventually that year she got on the road with us. And she was there at most of the shows for the rest of my time with him, which was up until the end of 2002. I often describe her as the female, Glenn Campbell. Her vocals are soothing, mellow, and just a pleasure to listen to. We learn from our bosses. But she has what Glenn used to call genital harmony, the genes of the family. Yes, she is very good with her harmonies. When we used to do, and I'm sure she's done it with you, let it be me, that was magic.

And, you know, it was really fun. She was part of a show at Third and Lensley, which is a club here in Nashville. And it was the Stars Kids show, I forget with the next generation. Yeah, I was there that night. That was shortly after I had started producing her. Oh, great. Well, then she, you know, she had me out there to do a couple songs with her. And it was so much fun.

Yeah, I really like her. She's just a great person to be around. She speaks well of you. She took care of her dad and she picked up his dry cleaning. She woke him up when it was time to get ready for stuff. Come on, dad. Come on, dad.

You know, the two of them were really the, you know. Oh, yeah. You can find pictures and videos on YouTube featuring both Glenn and her in interviews together, performing on stage together. I think she was with him for around 24 years on the road. So it was a great relationship for sure.

The nice thing about that relationship, too, was that that was helping to fill in the void that was there in her life when her dad was living in L.A. and married again, not to her mom, and they were getting the Bel Air treatment and all the stars and stuff. And Debbie really didn't have that time with her dad. And the other kids and Debbie are all close now, but she was able to build, rebuild, or actually maybe just plain build that relationship with her dad. Yeah, it was really important to her. and I think that's great. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's great she had that time with him. So now, what's next on the agenda with you?

Oh, boy. You got a minute? Sure. Why not? Well, here, yeah, I've been on a couple of podcasts. One came up last spring. And it was kind of in my mind like a tea bag, you know, steeping in there and I was thinking about it.

And people to hear me occasionally mention it. And then I met with my friend Dave Sandler, who was the guy that worked with the Beach Boys at Pet Sounds and Smile in that area. He was one of Brian's co-producers and understudies. I was at his house in Minneapolis. We were sitting at the piano in his office and I said, David, I'm going to just record this. I want to ask all these questions about Brian.

And when I got back here to Nashville, I had a recording and I thought, okay, now I've done it. I'm creating a podcast. So I went online and I researched all the gear that you can get and I was going to get that and I changed my mind. Anyway, long story short, I have a podcast. podcast November, 2024. I've got a long guest list of people and then I have a dream list of people that are going to come later once I'm up and running because there are so many people. Every time you turn around, right, Tony, you think, oh, I should get that guy on my, I should get her on my podcast. It's called Count It Off, Your Fresh New Window into the World of Music. It'll be appearing at all the places in Streamland. And then besides that, I've got a new trio. And I'm part of a group that's I call it GMC, which is Garfunkel, Manilow, and Campbell. Art Garfunkel's guitar player, tab, who you may know, he's a Nashville guy.

He's been with Art for 23 years, I think, and he's in New York with him right now, so he's still arts guitar player. Sing's great, plays great guitar. Well, he has to because he's the one backing up art. And then Eddie Kilgallan, who has a connection with Barry Mantelow and sings him like nobody's business.

All good, yeah, he's a piano player, he's the band leader and road manager for Eddie Montgomery, and before that Montgomery's entry. And then my Glenn Campbell connection, which, you know, I have the salute to Glenn Campbell show that I've been doing for 10 or 12 years. And we're going to be out as GMC, and we've got our first date coming up in Minneapolis

at the Dakota Jazz Club in February, and we're going to be filling out the year with those dates. With our schedule's permitting, that's the other thing. We've got to juggle. Yeah, that's great. Great group of guys. What's the music going to be on it?

Well, the trio's going to do the hits. There's great musical quality in all of it. When we get together and do the boxer and homeward-bound and songs like that, sounds of silence and the harmony, he's just like, oh, it's so much fun to have a vocal group instead of an artist with your musicians. Now, before we came on to talk, you mentioned that you did something with some autistic children, knowing that I have an autistic podcast. So can you expand on that some?

True. I have a program. This is another thing I do called Making Music Nashville Style. It started with a visionary teacher who saw the way I interacted with kids in her school. She retired after 25 years of teaching. And she said, should try, I think you'd be good at doing a residency showing the kids how to do music. And so she sketched out a plan and went and got it funded. And we started out in 20, I think 2011, maybe. This is our 15th year coming up. And I've just had a gas working with fifth graders, some fourth graders, some places, but mostly fifth graders. And we do a residency of a week or two weeks or three weeks, depending on the school and how many kids I've got to get around to. We write songs together. And the kids are

usually bunched up, used to be democratic, and now it's more just by gender, the girls and the boys. But what I've learned in those groups is that the kids that are, what they call it now, special needs, learning disabled, ADD, LD, autistic are the most creative, wonderful kids I've ever worked with. The autistic ones, and I don't mean to single them out because everybody's brilliant. I mean, all these kids are just golden creations, have the most fascinating ideas. I've got a song on my couple albums ago, and the album's called Tropical Trubidor, and there's a song on there called Chillo. And the fifth graders caught me saying that word because I was stumbling over my words

trying to say chill and mellow, and it came out Chillo. And they went, hey, we like that word. Can we write that title? And that around and did it. The song came together in two days, in their classroom all together. And the kids were very much in that special needs group, and I love the song. That's awesome. The great thing about working with kids, they don't hold back. They tell you the truth. They're just being who they are and to tell you the truth, that innocence that they project is just everything that you hope to see from a kid, just being a kid.

And that's true. I think they're not caught up in being cool or getting somebody to notice them or if they're hitting that age where, you know, boys want girls to notice boys who are noticing girls and that whole thing. And they're just being, as you said, just being themselves. There was one group were, it was a mixed group. And the boys were writing a song called Two Months of Torture, and it was about summer school. And again, I let them pick the titles and I said, but kids, if you write, if you come up with a dumb title, we have to write a dumb song. You know that. Two months of torture. Two months of torture.

And we were stuck. One of the kids who was autistic, and I can't remember his name, but God bless him. And he started getting agitated. And I said, what's wrong? He goes, when I'm in small groups, nobody ever picks my ideas. I said, well, what's your idea? And he said, a hurricane of pain that'll last forever. I mean, there was our second line.

Two months a toe to him. A hurricane of pain that'll last forever. I was like, you got anything else? And he goes, the ultimate bummer that lasts all summer. Spike the ball in the end zone for the win. And he burst into a smile that it was a special, special moment. And that was a hit song in the classroom. And that means a lot.

Stop and think about it. We as musicians try and write the best songs, try and get the best promoters, try and get the best recordings, try and get the biggest hits. We try and keep it out there just all the time. But something like you just did in the classroom with those kids, that kind of emotion, that kind of feeling,

can mean more than those gold records on the wall because you see the smiles on their faces. It really is. I released that song, Chillo. I haven't, there's another one called I'll see you there about a clapmate that passed away from cancer. And was it cancer? No, they had an accident. I forget what, but the kids wrote a great memorial to their friend. Yeah. Nice. That means a lot to a lot of people. Now, since Glenn passed, you've done a lot of shows around the country paying tribute to his music too, correct? I love doing that. I feel like a steward of the legend, you know. When I first got some requests, Glenn was alive, and I talked to him, and I showed him that I was dedicating an album to him, and then I went to management, and I said, what do you think? Because these people are asking him. They said, Jeff, of everybody that could do it, you're the one that ought to, because you front of the band, you conducted the orchestra, you sang all the songs in Soundcheck. We give you the two thumbs up. And that I got started, and Debbie and I have both dropped the idea that maybe she should come out and do a show with us, and we've got one in February in Phoenix, the salute to Glenn Campbell, and I'm hoping

that maybe she'll drop in and do one with me. Yeah, I agree. I think she should do it. I think it would be really great. I think she should because she sings his song so well, and people remember her from the 24 years she spent with Glenn. She's a big part of the Glenn Campbell family of fans on Facebook and all the other platforms. So yeah, I think it'd be great for her to do it. definitely absolutely should um her younger brother travis who's the second in line the oldest boy Travis came to bartlesville Oklahoma when I was playing there and came to the show and just sobbed lost it on my shoulder man it was so great you know he just he loved and and he and I talk we tell stories and joke around about his dad and Travis didn't see a lot of

that because Glenn was always gone in some ways I was lucky enough to be with Glenn even more than he had maybe except when he was home Yeah, that's the sad part about the business that we're in. If they're real successful, they're on the road all the time, they just don't get a chance to see their family like everyone else would that works 9 to 5. That's why I'm here. I worked with Gary Paxton and Bob Millsap, and Gary had so many hit records out there and was traveling so much.

He didn't even know his 21-year-old son. So I decided that I wasn't going to have that issue. So that's why I'm here in Nashville doing production development. and management. This way can see the kids grow up, grandkids grow up, and it just means more than being on the road.

That's beautiful. Now, was he related to Kit Paxton or any of those guys? No, he was the lead singer of the Argyles, Allie Upp and all those hits, as well as producing the Monster Mash. Oh, sure. Now, Bob, he produced a few country stars, but his big claim to fame that he loved was he published the song You Need Me that Anne Murray cut. Oh, yeah.

And with our friend, gosh, what was his name from Nashville here, Randy Goodrum? Yeah, that's right. So those two were kind of my mentors that influenced me to move to Nashville to get off the road. Well, that's great. I'm glad you're here. You've got records on the wall and signs, pictures of the stars. Yeah, I've been very fortunate. Worked with a lot of great people.

I'm currently working with Donnie Most of Happy Days. Oh, gosh, that's great. Yeah, he's got this huge voice, kind of like Frank's and Nassie. Bobby Darren. He does really well. That's great. I love the fact that we get these opportunities. And living in Nashville, I always tell people on the shows that I do, this is it. I mean, this is the town. Everybody loves coming here, whether they live here or not. And when they come here and spend a little time, I think half of them will really want to move here

or get a second house if they can do that. Well, you know, I'm sure you feel the same way, too. But we do what we do because we love the music. We don't go out there with chips on our shoulders and proclaim to be the biggest, the best. in the world, we just love what we do. Because of that, we get to work with some of the best players and singers that you can find in the country. Yeah. Then when you get a chance to do interviews or podcast or whatever you may do, you get a chance to look at your body of work and reflect a little, and then you can really appreciate all the hard work that went into doing what you do.

And I love that. I love the opportunity to work with the greats. I mean, my, last, oh, I don't know, five or six albums. I've had an incredible cast of A-list session guys. And the last two I've had Lonnie Wilson and Mike Rojas, Scotty Sanders, Jimmy Carter, just tremendous people. And, oh, Brent Mason, this other kid, he's doing pretty well. Yeah, I say he's done fairly well. My go-to guy on guitar has been around a while, Tom Wilde. Yeah. I use Dave Pramroy on bass as much as I can. Dave, my buddy, he was on Williams when I first met. him. Yeah, he's been around for sure. I've had him on just recently. Oh, great. Did you have about that slide in No Stranger to the Rain, that big boom?

Oh, yeah. Such an iconic moment. That's the one I was like, I got to meet this Dave guy. Oh, yeah, it's great. So when you sit back and look at the people that we've surrounded ourselves with, you can kind of reflect and just take a little pride in what you've done. Yeah, you sure can. I had, just yesterday, I interviewed Josh Diddy. He's a first engineer, he's the head chief engineer and he's worked with joy moye on his productions for years he's worked on Florida Georgia line and Keith urban and pink and Morgan wallen and Hardy and all the guys and he's right here in the neighborhood I live across the street from old Judy Rhodes and Judy's husband was Leon

Rhodes from Texas Trubadors take it away Leon and he was a wonderful guy and that's just the neighborhood yeah that's the great thing about living in Nashville you never know who's around the next corner So in closing, what would you like to leave the listeners with? Well, be good to each other, y'all. You know, the world, no matter how you see it, the world's gone pretty crazy, and every day there's more news about something tragic and something ridiculous and something scary, and who knows what we've done to our planet

and who knows what we're doing to each other. I hope we can, as Glenn would say, try a little kindness, you know, let people in in traffic, you know. I have a little box of checkered flags, and I give them to people as they go racing by me and go, You win. You get the checkered flag first place. Because it doesn't cost me anything to do that. And kindness is free to give.

And if I can do that, I think I've done part of my gig. I think that's great. One last thing. How do people find you? Jeff Dayton Music.com. Most of it, on YouTube, it's Jeff Dayton Music. On Instagram, it's jeff. Dot Dayton, Instagram.

Jeff. Datton, Instagram. Try to forget it. I bet you can't. Podcast is on Counted Off podcast on Facebook. and we will have news about that when it kicks off. I'll look forward to inviting you on as a guest later on, Tony, once I get through my guest list that I've already lined up. I know how that is.

Just let me know I'll be there. Well, this has been great, great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Appreciate again. You have me on there. That's great. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks again.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantor production. For more information, contact. Media at plateau music.com